Tomb Raider (2013) review: there's a Lara things to love

"I hate tombs," mutters a bloodstained 21-year-old Lara Croft, the spritely archaeologist who has just escaped, battered and blood-soaked, from a room littered with severed limbs; a room where she was hung to die from a hook by crazed ritualistic islanders, alongside a dozen corpses drained of blood like a carcass in an forgotten abattoir.

If any scene served to adequately summarise the atmosphere of

Tomb Raider -- Crystal Dynamics' reboot of an almost two-decade-long series of games -- it is this. The depth of visceral grizzliness present in the origins story of Ms Croft is unlike any previous installment; the self-referential comment on the hatred of "tombs" is almost a nod to the player who knows that in her later life, the word is ostensibly analogous to the name Lara Croft.

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This is Lara's origin story, and for readers keen to know my opinion without reading further, it's vastly superior to many recent adventure games and is comprehensively brilliant.

It is, however, something of a departure from the classic

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Tomb Raider format -- puzzle-solving, isolation from other humans, looting for medipacks and collecting keys feel like tropes of a bygone era. This new adventure takes far more clues from the likes of Call of Duty, with auto-regenerating health, cover-based combat, highly-choreographed scripted cutscenes with "press Y to not die" quicktime events, and uncharacteristic graphic violence and gore.

These changes may alienate Tomb Raider die-hards, and it certainly gives the impression that the developers are keen to make sure they're incentivising the CODBLOPS and Uncharted kids who are used to playing as rough-and-tumble square-jawed macho marines with balls as big as their gun barrels, not slender 20-something ladies.

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Regardless, Crystal Dynamics has made an incredible piece of adventure gaming. Whether you consider the immersive and exquisitely designed landscapes you'll play through, or the perfect balance of action to exploration, it's a game I found impossible not to enjoy every minute of.

The story is simple: Lara is out to discover a site of archaeological importance with a team of colleagues and a camera crew. A storm hits, they end up stranded on a mysterious island that won't let them escape, and there's weird evidence of local ritualistic activity and inhabitants that really do not relish the uninvited presence of "outsiders". So far, so Lost. But what develops is a story of how Lara, later known for her successes as a hardened explorer, became so hard, though a story that involves loss, death, major personal injury, psychological torment, near-sexual abuse and persistent mortal peril.

It's not a deep story, but it is a good one. One of the most intriguing chapters is the one in which Lara makes the first kill of her life. She's pinned down by an attacker. There's a struggle over a handgun. Lara's strength to push it an inch, then another inch, then another, until the barrel of the gun is aimed close enough to her assailant's face, is just enough that she's able to put a bullet through his head and blow part of his skull off. It's graphic, it's a little disturbing and, fittingly, Lara is devastated. She struggles to regain composure. Is she going to vomit? She's definitely going to cry. But within the next five minutes she's killed another dozen men and doesn't seem to bat an eyelid.

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Whether that's a criticism of storytelling or simply a writer's way of saying Lara had to learn to be tough fast, is up to you, the player, to decide. But it's one of many deliberately harder-hitting scenes where we see Lara barely survive a movie-like near-death, all-action experience, from which we're left to derive, "Ah, that's why she's so tough in later games".

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Action aside, progression through the game is highly scripted but well paced; linear in storyline but rewarding to those who want to look around before advancing forward. Environments are large, enormously detailed at times and although raiding tombs is relegated to side quests, they do exist if you go looking for them.

There are trinkets to discover, artifacts to find and examine, as well as journals to uncover that reveal the backstory to many of the game's characters. This element of the game will definitely have the Tomb Raider traditionalists occupied for some time.

An element I particularly enjoyed was the upgradability of weapons and skills. As you progress through the game you'll earn experience points. You get the most by completing levels and finding tombs, but when you factor in that headshots, salvaging loot and discovering artifacts reward small but frequent bonuses, it's possible to have a different playing experience to someone who just races through the story. With more XP comes more advanced combat skill; with more loot and salvage comes better weapon upgrades. It makes searching for hidden items more meaningful than just a gallery under an Extras item in the main menu, or Xbox achievement points.

Particular effort has been made to give the game a memorable atmosphere as well. Aside from the game's graphics, which really are stunningly beautiful at times and clearly pushing the Xbox (as reviewed) to its limits, it's the subtler things that make the most interesting difference. Take walking through a dark corridor for instance. As you walk, you may hear a voice in the background.

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Lara's head might turn as she hears it too. Later she might be covered in dirt, but if you fall in a pool, you'll find a lot of the dirt has suddenly been washed off.

These may sound like small points, almost needlessly commented on. But over the course of the game you realise that the innumerable examples of attention to detail such as these add up, and the result is a gaming environment that feels responsive and alive.

The soundtrack, too, is worthy of praise. Most soundtracks in modern gaming are responsive to what's happening on-screen, but in

Tomb Raider it's particularly noticeable that real care was given to sequencing the music. It's not just loud for action, quiet for stealth -- sometimes it seems to switch genres depending on the environment: at times there's a booming orchestra, at others it sounds almost like Balinese gamelan. I kept noticing how much I enjoyed this soundtrack.

In summary, Crystal Dynamics has created what it needed to: a highly polished, deeply enjoyable game that should appeal as much to action shooter nuts as (a large number of) classic Tomb Raider fans. It's like a blend between Tomb Raider Legend and Call of Duty. Graphically stunning and graphically violent; visceral, compelling and balanced.

Lara may spend one emotional moment saying she hates tombs, but there's no doubt in my mind I loved Tomb Raider.